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safari and aol web mail

Okay, don't slam me about having AOL for mail, I do have a reason. If you want to know, I was one of the first on AOL - back in '89 - before it was even called AOL. So my e-mail address there is of sentimental value and it is in so many people's address books and software manufacturer's registrations it would be difficult if not impossible to change it. But, I do not like their AOL Desktop software for mail, there is some bug in it when it comes to replying to mail which causes the dreaded spinning beach ball - taking way too much time to do mail. So I use their web based mail browser mail access...


Now on to my question. Yesterday (6/9/12) when inside a message the delete and action button began to be unresponsive - no mouse/cursor click action. I tried deleting the cache, no good. Restarting Safari the buttons would work for one message, then not. Hovering the cursor over these buttons normally changes to the little hand, but when unresponsive - no little hand.


At the moment I'm installing the OS X Lion 10.7.4 Combo update (booted in another partition) and am also going to reinstall the Safari app from a download. Other than that I can't figure this out. Of note, AOL has been advertising recently of new features coming to AOL Mail, not sure if they were referring to their mail program or to the web based mail. I REALLY prefer the web mail versus the application (AOL Desktop), the features (i.e. the little trash can icon in each mail line makes deleting mail so much faster than check marking and then clicking delete). When one's mail box has almost 200 mails a day everything to speed the daily task of going through it helps.


I will update and let you all know if the combo and reinstall of Safari works (BTW Safari is version 5.1.7)


Thanks for reading - hopefully someone has seen this and knows what's up.


Tom

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.4)

Posted on Jun 9, 2012 12:26 PM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Jun 9, 2012 1:02 PM

To update...


After rebooting in to my main drive after applying the Combo Update, I then downloaded and installed the Safari app (downloaded from the Apple/Support/Downloads) and all seems to be working well with AOL Mail (web mail/broswer). The delete and action tabs are working. Not sure what was up but either the Combo or Safari reinstall fixed it. But I also went to the Library/Preferences and deleted all Safari preferences. Probably should have done one at a time - but the important thing is the mail is working as should.


Now back to reading my daily in box - - -


Tom

19 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Jun 9, 2012 1:02 PM in response to Golf25Radioman

To update...


After rebooting in to my main drive after applying the Combo Update, I then downloaded and installed the Safari app (downloaded from the Apple/Support/Downloads) and all seems to be working well with AOL Mail (web mail/broswer). The delete and action tabs are working. Not sure what was up but either the Combo or Safari reinstall fixed it. But I also went to the Library/Preferences and deleted all Safari preferences. Probably should have done one at a time - but the important thing is the mail is working as should.


Now back to reading my daily in box - - -


Tom

Jun 10, 2012 9:34 AM in response to Golf25Radioman

It's back - the unresponsive buttons (mainly delete/action). Normal action is the little hand and the buttons highlight when hovering over them on the tope of each mail. Not today. I've got a lot of browser windows open in Tabs along with some other windows for NASCAR, but that shouldn't be related since this was happening yesterday with none of that.


Perplexing. I can restart Safari and it will be okay for a message or two. Another note, this isn't happening in Firefox or Chrome. I've gotten so used to Safari's layout, features I really don't want to switch browsers.


Any suggestions?


FYI - prior to this (within a week), not related though, I had done some regular maintenance (for me). Rebooted into TechTool Pro/s E-Drive to rebuild directories and pror to that I did a Volume Optimization. Another thing I have recently activated is Cocktail's Memory Purge on a 60 minute schedule. For whatever reason, OS X Lion does not release unused memory and occasionally you can find over half of your memory gone, or up to only about 50 MB left out of 8 GB with most apps closed. So rather than opening Cocktail when I notice system slow down I set it to auatomatically do the purge.


May or may not be connected, but that's all I can think of. It isn't on AOL's side if this doesn't occur in other browsers.


Tom

Jun 11, 2012 10:19 AM in response to Golf25Radioman

All is well today with AOL Webmail and Safari. I can only guess that it had to be on the AOL side of things. Odd. At least so far today, first thing, reading AOL Webmail all the mail functions (action, delete, etc.) are working.


While I have your attention, at least I hope I have someone's attention; or maybe I should start another thread. Well this is concerning Safari and functionality...so what the heck.


Is anyone but me having issues clicking on some web ads and only getting a blank window with a lable of some graphic and its size? Supposedly supposed to be a hyperlink to a page only gives a URL of some massive numbers/characters and sometimes an http link in it. Like this as an example: http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;258445985;63770597;h?http://www.mupromo.com/affil/ 11350


Supposed to be a link for Mountain Lion apps off the Macworld.com page for the WWDC. But I can probably name many links that do that, some out of Google, web pages ad nauseum.


Any ideas?


Tom

Jun 11, 2012 12:42 PM in response to Golf25Radioman

What the heck... No sooner than I posted the last, the same issue of the AOL Webmail action buttons not working started again. For more clarity of what I'm talking about I took a screen shot of them:


User uploaded file


The Action - Delete - Spam buttons are what I'm talking about. For me, these are very important when going through a daily 200 or so messages - less time in mail the more for other things.


I tried one more thing. I reset Safari (somethiing I hate to do since so many sites' passwords/logins saved have to be re-entered). Since the reset the dang buttons are working. Interesting note, when they started not working just a bit ago I launched Firefox and they worked fine. But I'm so used to Safari and everything I've configured it's easire for my daily web stuff. Nothing wrong with Firefox (or Chrome), they're just laid out a bit differenet - or I just need to customize them some more to make them more like what I am used to.


I'm sure any who have been reading my posts on this topic may be tiring of this, but not as much as me trying to figure out what's causing it. I thought that a Flash update this morning could have been connected, but something like that shouldn't be browser dependent, right?


Oh well....back to mail. It's already noon thirty here on the West Coast and I still have 100+ messages to weed through before I can get to my "real work" - not a "real job" as jobs go - a volunteer for my military veteran groups...still work though and time consuming. 😉


Thanks for reading...


Oh, BTW - did anyone watch the WWDC this morning? I did for a while. I didn't stay long enough to see what the covered sign was in the Moscony lobby, but hung around long enough to see the new MacBook Air and Pro features. Oh to be always able to have the latest / greatest product...an impossible task for most. 🙂


Tom

Jun 12, 2012 10:09 AM in response to Golf25Radioman

If anyone is reading this thread, I may have found an answer today. When I opened AOL's web mail this pop-up type message was there. Maybe it is connected to the issues I've described above. Not that I would have gotten any faster solution from AOL had I written to them instead of posting here. 😉

"

Coming your way soon!

AOL Mail is cooking up a tasty new look for your inbox and you are going to be among the first to try it. We're almost done adding the final touches.


Take a peek at the new AOL Mail"


Tom

Jun 17, 2012 9:36 AM in response to Golf25Radioman

If anyone is interested, I did receive a reply to AOL support with a suggestion. In the AOL web mail browser window, in the upper right corner is a link "Help" - if you hold the shift key down when clicking that it will open a window with various parameters that can be reset. Much like other programs where you might trash the preferences, you'll have to reset anything you've customized (like the theme, etc.) but I will help resolve small issues. As futile contacting support usually is, this actually was of help and it didn't take to long to reset things to my preferences.


Tom

Jun 28, 2012 2:04 PM in response to Golf25Radioman

This is still frustrating to me, and now that AOL's web mail has launched the new version it has not helped it any. I am going to, again, try and download and reinstall Safari and see. FYI, it seems that it is isolated to Safari, Firefox seems to be working okay.


The Safari issue is hard to pin down too. I can open New Mail, read a couple of messages and the buttons go dormant. Relaunch AOL web mail and they're back. That's better than before the new AOL version came online, but still a big annoyance.


I doubt anyone is really reading this "Safari" for me (pun intended), but since it has not resolved itself I thought I'd keep posting. I will return if it goes away and hopefully I'll know what it was.


Tom

Jun 29, 2012 12:56 PM in response to Golf25Radioman

Well, maybe a final solution - but I'll wait for a few days before celebrating. This odd behavior (the cursor not being able to activate a button in a broswer window) that had been limited to AOL's web mail, today in American Greetings I was trying to send a card. The "Personalize" button wouldn't work, no click, no hand. I Option-Clicked the button and found a menu for FLASH - I never thought of that! And I had been using Firefox this morning because the AOL mail thing was getting to me. Firefox seemed to be immune to it, but the American Greetings inoperative button in Firefox is when the light bulb went off.


So I went to Adobe.com, downloaded and installed the Flash app. I also did a Repair of Permissions, but nothing of note came up. But the big thing is so far everything is workng as it should.


I have no idea how this became an issue. Possibly a beta Flash got installed via MacUpdate - don't care at the moment.


Hope if anyone has experienced something similar that this helps.


Tom

Jul 4, 2012 11:10 AM in response to Golf25Radioman

FYI, the Safari browser & AOL's web mail is still around. A very elusive problem. I have searched these discussions and very few people have any problems with Safari 5.1.7, so I'm left with the conclusion it is something with my configuration. It's not the Flash, since Firefox uses the same plugin type and there's no issues with Firefox. And except for the one time in American Greetings I've not had any problems with any other site. The first use of AOL web mail is okay, one e-mail opening and the buttons go dormant. Reloading AOL web mail may give operationability but that's a pain. As much as I don't like to Firefox may be what I have to use until I can figure this out our Apple releases another version. But since I seem to be alone with this issue I'm not holding out hope that a fix for my problem is coming.


I just downloaded and installed 5.1.7 again, did some preference cleaning, did a Safari Reset, and we'll see how long this lasts. Very frustrating.


I read another post about someone wanting to downgrade Safari, the reply said its not possible unless one has an old copy on a back up. Not sure how far my Time Machine goes back, possibly a Retrospect might go back. But there's no guarantee it will solve the problem. Since e-mail takes up a few hours a day this problem is eating up time. And, as many know, AOL isn't too keen on having the lastest proprietary software for the Mac - they're stuck at AOL Desktop version 1.7 and it doesn't work; now it crashes too - before it just was a slug.


The journey continues...


Tom

Aug 15, 2012 9:19 AM in response to TigerE

Wow, I'm not alone! I don't know if that's good or not. Here's my latest. Use Firefox and none of all the listed problems do not exist. But my e-mail in box has enough daily messages that any unnecessary time included in going through them makes the process even harder. And Firefox is just different enough (having almost exclusively used Safari since day one) that I (at this time) don't want to make it my default browser.


Odd thing, yesterday after going through all my AOL mail using Firefox, I went back to Safari and all (almost at least) seem to operate properly. Believe me I have tried ever setting, resetting, etc., to try and make it work. The action buttons just go dead to the cursor and there's no identifying relationship to why/when it starts. I did try having each e-mail open into a new window and everything is fine (action buttons work, etc.) but that too is clumsy and time consuming.


I thought it was connected to AOL's recent remodeling the web mail interface, which after it was done things seemed to be okay - then back to the old inactive cursor on the action buttons.


I'll see if Safari is still "friendly" today with AOL. I'll post here if I figure out something definite. BTW, I have deleted every preference I could think of that could be at the root of this, if any success it was short lived.


Tom

Aug 15, 2012 9:26 AM in response to Golf25Radioman

Oh, one other thought - and never thought it could be related but Safari's newest version is 6.0, unlike when I first started this thread when it was at 5.1.7. And I did find out it is almost impossible to downgrade from 6.0. Had problems on my MacPro when doing a clean install. Apparently a clean install of Lion 10.4 and then doing a Software Update (which includes a combo type update to OS X 10.7.4) doesn't install version 6.0 of Safari, and 5.1.7 WILL NOT LAUNCH once 6.0 has been installed. Thank goodness for Time Machine backups; but that's not easy either since you can't delet Safari - the OS says it is necessary part of the OS. And when trying to restore a Time Machine Safari 6.0 file, if you choose to replace the file you get an error (something about permissions). I did, however, successfully restore it by chosing "keep both" then deleting 5.1.7, and renaming the 6.0 version to Safari. I could not find a place on Apple/Support to download Safari 6.0 - and one would think it would be in the 10.7.4 update, guess not.


A little off track, but that has been mixed in with a few other problems, among them upgrading my MacBook Pro to 10.8 Mountain Lion and getting some of those issues fixed. Busy week! 🙂


Tom

Aug 16, 2012 6:27 AM in response to Golf25Radioman

So, I guess it is going to be near impossible to use Aol web mail, if you use Safari? I amtrying to figure out if this a lost casue. I have had my username for almost 15 years and don't want another email account. However, I can't function without being to mail, respond or attend to my email account. Please update if you have any thoughts. Thanks...

Aug 23, 2012 1:36 PM in response to TigerE

TigerE wrote:


So, I guess it is going to be near impossible to use Aol web mail, if you use Safari? I amtrying to figure out if this a lost casue. I have had my username for almost 15 years and don't want another email account. However, I can't function without being to mail, respond or attend to my email account. Please update if you have any thoughts. Thanks...

Try this, and it has worked better than any of the other things I've tried. When at the web.aol.mail.com site, go to the Settings (upper left top) and under the first window of settings check the item "Open Each Message In A New Window." So far everything works okay, and the fact that each mail opens into that new window, everything works as expected when in that mail message window. It is the least work around that I've found that doesn't add significantly to the time to go through your daily e-mail in box.


It IS A SAFARI / AOL issue, because it's not doing it in Firefox. But I've become so accustomed to Safari that I just don't want to do the learning curve to adapt to Firefox. Nothing wrong with Firfox, an excellent browser, but things are placed indifferent places, etc. Maybe I'm just too old to adjust - just kidding. 😉


Tom

Aug 31, 2012 2:19 PM in response to Golf25Radioman

Interesting note here on this issue. I had the extension for eBay, which was very convenient and I liked it. I disabled it the other day. In AOL mail I had changed preferences to have each message into a new window (a bit of a pain). But after disabling the eBay extension I thought I'd try AOL mail without it opening each message into a new window (or preview paine, etc.). Well, it seems that the issue is over. Each message opens, the buttons to delete, action, etc., have been working for a few days now. Makes me wonder how the eBay extension could have, if it was, involved in this. But I'm happy now...


Tom

safari and aol web mail

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